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Clicks

A count of the number of times someone clicked on your ad and went through to your landing page.

Impressions

A count of times your ad was seen by someone, thanks to him searching for a certain keyword you have created an ad for.

CTR

Click Through Rate – A percentage calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of ad impressions.

PPC

Pay Per Click – The system used to generate visits from advertisements, paying for people who click through your ad.

CPC

Cost Per Click – One of the two main methods used to pay for online ads. Cost Per Click means that you pay a certain fee (either manually offered by you, or automatically decided by the platform) according to your bid for a certain keyword.

CPM

Cost Per Mille – The second of the two main methods used to pay for online ads. Using the CPM method you will be charged for every 1000 times your ad has been seen by someone. It may be clicked once, it may be clicked a thousand times, you will pay the same amount.

Average Position

When using Google AdWords (or Bing) to advertise, this number will show where your ad has been appearing mostly, calculating the average of all the ad positions available your ad has successfully occupied.

Conversions

A conversion is measured at the moment a visitor has performed a measured action on your page. According to what your website is about, a conversion could be a sale, a subscription to a newsletter, or making a phone call.

Ad Extensions

Google offers a series of added information you can add to your ad snippet for free, that will help get the searcher’s attention, and convince him to click on your ad instead of your competitor’s.

A few ad extension examples are:

Phone number

Physical Address

Internal links

Reviews

Offers

ecc

The Digital Campaign Structure

When creating an ad campaign the process is kind of complicated for the first timers.

What is an ad campaign?

An ad campaign is a series of advertisements groups placed on various channels, aimed at a certain geographical area. This ad campaign has a lifetime budget and/or a daily budget.

What is an ad group?

Ad groups will help you choose whom to show your ads. According to the channel you’re advertising on, you will be able to aim your ads at people using their demographical information (age, gender, location), psychographic information (hobbies, interests), and Socio-economical information (income, status).

Search Engines, however, will let you create ad groups by search terms. Meaning a list of keywords one of which the user has to use in order to see your ad.

What is an ad then?

An ad is what the person sees. The image, the copy, the link he clicks on. Try to make the copy follow the AIDA model.

It’s hard to remember all of the technical terms and acronyms for these digital thingamajigs. So bookmark this glossary for Search Engine Marketing terms.